Combined Unit Plan Assessment and Evaluation - 2007

Unit Name: Volcanoes
Author: Liza Ginis
Evaluator: Jay

This assessment is a combination of three different forms. The first is meant to provide feedback on the degree that the unit plan has incorporated the main ideas about science teaching stressed in EDC 430 this semester. The second is the URI School of Education Rubric that is used across all the teaching methods courses to make sure that the Rhode Island Beginning Teacher Standards (RIBTs) are being addressed. The third component is a summary of my feedback for each of your unit plan components. NOTE: All criteria on the SOE Rubric must score a 3 or above in order for you to begin student teaching. Please feel free to revise your unit plan based on this feedback, and send me an email explaining your revisions.

Score Summary: Grade: 24.5/25. All SOE criteria were met..
Specifically:

• Please add a statement in each lesson introductory activity that establishes the context of the lesson within the unit, why this lesson is important, and what are the objectives/goals the student should aim for by the end of the day. (To fix Criteria 5)

Note: Detailed lesson by lesson feedback at bottom of page. - fogleman

Completeness and Organization

Criteria	Points/Possible	Comments
1. Is the unit plan organized in a way that makes sense?	01/(01)
2. Are all the components present? (e.g. Purpose, Concept Map or Outline, 10 Day Lesson Sequence, 3 Long Lessons, Rationale citing how students learn, Assessment strategy.)	12/(12)
3. Is the writing clear, engaging, proofread, formatted, etc.	01/(01)

Content

Criteria	Points/Possible	Comments
4. Are the standards unpacked to indicate subtopics? Student preconceptions?	02/(02)
5. Does each lesson include learning performances, i.e. statements about what students will be able to do at the end of the lesson?	02/02)
6. Do the plans have students doing something every day? Do students experience phenomena related to the topic?	02/(02)
7. Do laboratory activities include sufficient time/instruction for students to do/learn about science practices?	.5/(01)	Few details about what will be taught in labs included. No focus on science practices apparent.

Assessment

Criteria	Points/Possible	Comments
8. Do the long lesson plans include questions that allow for formative assessment?	01/(02)	Not apparent in short lessons
9. Are students assessed at a variety of cognitive levels?	02/(02)

Overall impression

10. What will students love (or at least enjoy) about this unit? Students will enjoy activities, learning about volcanoes.

11. What might be added to make this unit more engaging? The purpose, goal, and context of each lesson needs to be established in order for students o understand why they are doing what they are doing.

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SOE Unit Plan Rubric

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Score: 4. Evidence/ Comments:

Goals are consistent with level and grade of course.

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Score: 3. Evidence/ Comments:

Relevant national standards (NSES) are unpacked, but not explicitly correlated to GSEs.

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Score: 5. Evidence/ Comments:

Goals focus on content and provide a variety of representations and points of view.

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Score: 5. Evidence/ Comments:

Lessons provide a variety of representations and points of view.

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Score: 4 Evidence/Comments:

Students prior knowledge is taken into account at a few points in the unit. Each Lesson begin by activiating prior knowledge and establishing the lesson's purpose.

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Score: 4 Evidence/Comments:

Lessons are sequence so that student understanding can build over the course of the unit. These connections are described in the overview for each lesson. Students express their understandings in a variety of ways throughout the unit.

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Score: 5. Evidence/Comments:

Technology is used in a variety of ways in the unit, including having students watch video related to volcanoes, conduct online research, as well as a variety of investigations.

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Score: 3. Evidence/Comments:

Resources that were included represented the lesson topics.

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Score: 4. Evidence/Comments

Though the unit relies on textbook-based worksheets for several activities, a variety of tasks that require comparison, analysis, and application are also included.

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Score: 4. Evidence/Comments:

Plan calls for both formative and summative assessment. Summative assessment is performance-based and provides a rubric up front for students.

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Score: 5. Evidence/Comments:

Unit is well and accurately written.

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Detailed Feedback

Overview

• I rearranged your front page to include much of the background info about unit. I hope you don't mind. If you do, just revert each of the changed pages. If you like it this way, I think you should add picture of a volcano on the front page. :-)

!!Learning Goals

• I also added links to your unpacking pages from your learning performance page.
• For the learning goals related to volcanoes, I don' understand what you mean by the misconception: "Constructive and destructive forces can be good for Earth but bad for humans, or vice versa." My reading of the standard suggests that there is not such thing as a "destructive volcanic force." The reason that I think this is worth noting is the other misconception that students can have: "What is bad for me is universally bad," where in reality "constructive" in the standard probably means "a force that builds up material."

Concept Map and Lesson Sequence

• I looked at your concept map and lesson sequence side by side, and I like how you've sequence your lessons. You could strengthen your lesson sequence by excerpting your lesson overviews to include a statement about what students are doing each day and how what they are doing relates to the theme of the overall unit.

L01 Convection in the Mantle

• Overview
  • Why not add a sentence to you overview that explains how the lesson relates to volcanoes? e.g. "In order to understand volcanoes, students must understand how the surface of the earth is able to move and shift."
• Objectives
  • Will students also be able to define and give examples of "convection?"
• Introduction
  • How will you explain the "what" and "why" of this unit? this lesson?
  • Good level of detail describing your activities, including this opening discussion.
  • Why not phrase your questions with verbs to indicate what students are to do:
    • In your own words, define "density."
    • Draw two pictures that contrast substances of high and low densities.
    • List factors that influence the motion of molecules in a gas or a liquid.
• Activities
  • Isn't it the other way around? The additional motion of molecules is an increase in temperature. The way you're phrasing this, it sounds like molecules move faster when something called "temperature" is increased, but the molecules are given additional motion by colliding with fast moving particles. These collisions transfer thermal energy. The reason that I point is out is that students have a difficult time distinguishing between heat and temperature, and explaining phenomena using a particle model of matter.
  • When you explain the difference between more and less dense substances, will you explain why one substance's particles may be more sparsely packed?
  • Nice sequence of questions.
  • I'm glad that you have thought through how you will assess students as they are drawing.
• Conclusion
  • Don't you think that you should reiterate the main points of the lesson before students leave?
• Assessment
  • What are four characteristics of their diagrams that you will look for?
• Rationale

L02 Rock Cycle and Rock Classification

• Overview
  • You stated in your rationale that each of your lessons builds on the previous lessons. If that is the case, then your overviews should state how each lesson builds on previous lessons. How does this lesson build on your lava lesson?
• Objectives
• Introduction
  • How will you introduce the "what" and "why" of this lesson?
  • What questions will you ask in this discussion? How will you support this reading?
• Activities
  • This audio clip goes great with your rock classification activity. Here is a link to the transcript and audio: http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/830/
  • Is the goal of the classification activity to successfully classify some rocks or to learn to apply the characteristics of the rock types to the task of classification? What is the difference between these two goals?
• Conclusion
  • Again, you should close class by connecting the different activities to the day's objective.
• Assessment
  • What will you ask students as you walk around while they classify their samples? What questions will you ask to close the activity?
• Rationale
  • Remember that the inquiry occurs when students observe and then discuss their reasons for particular classifications.
  • I suggested an alternate enactment of this activity that you might keep in mind for the future. :-)

L03 - Mineral Identification

• Overview
  • Did you explain why you think it is important for students to identify minerals? I did not see minerals included in your unpacking of the standards.
• Objectives
• Introduction
  • You should explain how this activity relates to the unit and to the previous lessons.
• Activities
  • The fact that you are relying on a given set of worksheets worries me a bit because worksheets such as these tend to focus on knowledge and comprehension at a very basic level.
  • This lesson plan is too brief to actually use in that I have no idea what will occur in this lab activity. What physical properties will you measure?

L04 Igneous Rock Formation

• Overview - none
• Objectives
• Introduction
  • Good question, but again, you need to establish a context for this lesson: What? and Why?
• Activities
  • Too brief to be useful.
  • Nice to end with crystal making, but should double time so that you can demo technique and close lesson with main ideas.
• Conclusions - see above
• Assessment/Conclusion - You could ask closing questions to see if they can connect lab with rock observations.

L05 - Volcanic Ash

• Overview - None
• Objectives
• Introduction
  • Again, you need to make clear "what," "why," and how this lesson will connect with the rest of the unit.
• Activities
  • Too brief to be useful
• Conclusion - none
• Assessment-none specified

L06

• Overview - explain contex of lesson.
• Objectives - fineVol
• Introduction - once again, you need to say something that makes the purpose and relevance of the activity clear.
• Activities
  • Nice place for an investigation. I assume that you have materials for the investigation that you did not post.
  • Before you teach this lesson, you need to think about what students will be learning and write down some questions that support where you want students to go.
• Conclusion
  • Once again, you need to revisit the main points of the lesson and how each activity informs these points.
• Assessment
  • It is not clear what you will ask/say to connect this activity to your objectives. You can't expect students to infer the purpose/main idea from an activity, since once they engage in the activity, most will focus on following the procedure.

L07 - Introducing Volcanoes - Same comments as above.

L08 - Volcanoes and Volcano types

L09 - Volcanoes can change the landscape

• Same comments as above. This plan will not help setup/enact this lesson.

L10 - Hawaiian Volcanoes

• Nice that you opened lesson with a question. Still need to make the connections between lessons and the goal for the day clear to students.
• I am intrigued by your use of the Hawaiian myth. It would be nice to hear your rationale. How would you compare our use of science with an ancient civilization's use of these stories? Will you use this opportunity to teach your students anything about the nature of science?
• Would your treatment ("Debunking") of the Pele myth seem disrespectful by anyone?

L11 - Volcanoes Assessment Lesson

• Overview
  • What are the big ideas that you hope they understand?
• Objectives
• Introduction
  • Why are you appealing to the assignment's beneficial effect on their grades? Isn't this reinforcing the idea that "school is all about grades," instead of "now that you learned all this about volcanoes, I want to see if you can apply i to a real problem."
• Activities
  • Neat idea for an assessment. Did you look into what an actual evacuation plan involves? Are you satisfied with the components that you are requiring? What difficulties do you anticipate students having? How will you help them during the process? Do you think you are allowing sufficient time? Have you done this yourself yet (You should before you assign it.)
• Conclusion
• Assessment
  • This rubric seems like it might be difficult to use, e.g. "well thought out" is hard to assess quickly, but you can refine the assessment details each year.
• Rationale
  • You mention that performance assessments reduce test anxiety. Have you seen this? Do performance assessments increase other types of anxiety?
  • I like the fact that you are keeping the time short to minimize socializing. You could probably scaffold their work further by establishing milestones within each period for each person.

Assessment Plan

• Nice discussion of assessment strategies.

Rationale

• I agree with you points.
• Great that you included additional readings.